At a Berlin press conference today Wilhelm Hankel and Karl Albrecht Schachtschneider, two of the famous "4 anti-euro professors" elaborated on the legal complaint against the ESM which they have filed along with the Free Voters party at the constitutional court, and attacked the bailout policy in harsh words.

Hankel said the ESM is a monster, unprecedented in the world with a capital base that is 140 times larger than that of the ECB, 80 times larger than that of the Bundesbank, and 50 times larger than that of Europe's biggest bank, Deutsche Bank. With that firepower, it will soak up all the capital needed for the bailouts, and that will leave nothing for public sector loans, for the municipalities, for the creation of youth jobs, for the firms. Europe's real economy will be bleeding out, also in terms of democratic rule, because the ESM is designed to stand above the democratic institutions of Europe (a point elaborated on even more by Schachtschneider, then——ed.).

Hankel also responded to a question posed by BueSo TV correspondent Stefan Tolksdorf on the way Merkel got pulled over the table at the EU Summit, on Obama's interferences, and on the hyperinflationary threat posed by the ESM and other policies. Hankel said that Obama's conduct had nothing to do with the euro as such, but more with the fact that de facto, the euro and the dollar are tied together. The German government should reject any interference from the US side, also reject such comments as that by the IMF's Christine Lagarde, who is said to have declared that if she ever heard mention of the German constitutional court again, she would leave the room right away.